Preface: Hoi, all! I'm LadyLilith2401 bringing you a different kind of Sailor Moon fanfiction story than what you might be used to. I feel that I need to make a minor disclaimer citing my influences. First of all, Sailor Moon is the work of Naoko Takeuchi and it is her we must all thank for bringing this fictional universe to us for our entertainment and to make fanfiction of any type for it possible in the first place. Second, The storyboard of this story was influenced by a fanfiction author called Jess Door, who wrote "Before the Beginning", which was very well done. While I can say her story was very influential on me and has even shaped the way I read the Manga, I feel I want to try a spin-off sort of deal where I take the premise of an action-packed sci-fi story in a different direction using Mythology (primarily Greek) as a backdrop. Not to worry, Miss Jess, your story is your own. Mine won't be the same thing. Finally, I wanted to point out that I use musical themes for my writing. The song titles used represent an inspiration in either the lyrics, the overall sound, or the meaning behind the song. I do encourage people to have a look at these musical pieces if they are curious about the background feel that they have given me as i wrote each chapter. To everyone involved at any point in helping to inspire this story either directly or indirectly, I extend my warmest thanks. Enjoy and please critique me so i can improve!
Prologue
"Terminal Frost"
"Mayday, mayday, mayday. This is OCS Alpha zero two three dash Sierra one zero seven, Velocity. Survivors aboard. Priority Code: Alpha Red, requesting evac."
The distress beacon had been repeating incessantly every half-hour for the past seven thousand years as the OCS Velocity drifted aimlessly through the Inner Solar system. Her high-gain transmitters had weakened over the millennia due to the withering one-tenth of the ancient warship's remaining power supply, which was barely able to keep the cyropods she cradled deep within her cold, dark bowels online. Seven pods, six of which glowed a dim red that signaled a flatline, once bearing a living person sleeping within in a state of suspended animation, had only few years of reserve power remaining before the life support systems went offline and the last living body among them expired. In several places, the extant aft-section ship was deteriorating with age, debris impacts, cyclical heating and freezing, and tidal forces from each pass around the sun as it went from inside the orbit of Mercury to that of Eris in the Kuiper Belt. The fore section of the ship had been destroyed in a pitched battle eons ago; all hands who didn't make it to the escape pods were killed.
Artificial gravity was offline; ice crystals, shards of glass, swirls of freezing fog, and bits of stray metal shrapnel floated aimlessly around the dimly-lit cryobay. Half of ship's remaining partitions were depressurised from the various hull breaches, exposing them to the hard vacuum of space. The only sign of activity was the faint blue glow of a monitoring terminal displaying the vitals of the seven occupants of the cryopods; six bright red flatlines and one green, regular, albeit slow pulse. Inside the computer core was the Velocity's artificial intelligence, who repeated the distress signal on automatic hail while doing everything she could to keep just enough power in reserve to keep the hibernating survivor alive. Virtually all of what remained of the warship had been systematically shut down over the many centuries. However, the brainwave scans from the lonely surviving pod occupant was being monitored closely and recorded. A sleeping mind was dreaming.
"Mayday, mayday, mayday. This is OCS Alpha zero two three dash Sierra one zero seven, Velocity. Survivors aboard. Priority Code: Alpha Red, requesting evac."
Athena sat on a beach, the city of Agartha just visible on the horizon to her left. Her cyan hair gently blew in the wind as she stared at the sky, blocking the disc of one of Olympia's moons, Nessus, from her sight with her dainty thumb. Occasionally, she'd move her thumb out of the way before moving it back between her bespectacled grey-blue eyes and the greater moon of two. As night was falling on Olympia, the young princess was performing a simple children's experiment with scaling the size of distant objects based on perspective.
"Three-hundred and eighty thousand, four-hundred kilometres." she said, thinking out loud. Her companion, Nessa, was near by, her bare feet playing with the ocean water. She was about the same age as Athena, with teal hair, green eyes, and a simpler upbringing. She turned to her friend curiously.
"Huh?" asked Nessa, as she looked up at the moon after which she was named. "My moon?"
"Nessus is three-hundred and eighty thousand, four-hundred kilometres distant." Athena replied. She'd turn her gaze to the other girl, her arm still out at its maximum reach. Athena's eyes were half-open as usual, her mild nearsightedness corrected by frameless lenses gently clipped to her dainty nose. "... The tide is coming in, you know. Pholus isn't far behind." she added, referring to the planet's second, lesser moon. The tidal forces of two moons meant that the spot Nessa had been sitting at would be underwater in the next half-hour.
"Speaking of which, where is Phoebe?" Nessa asked, looking around for the other girl that came with them. Nessa withdrew her legs from the rising water and stood up, holding her blue skirt up above her wet shins as she bent to pick up her sandals.
Athena turned her head, slowly lowering her outstretched arm. She looked behind her and saw a woman with shoulder length blonde hair and violet-blue eyes approaching quickly with a look of urgency on her face. Phoebe was still dressed in her one-piece swimsuit, despite the sun beginning to set. A gust of wind blew across the sand, but something didn't feel quite right about it, as if the wind was a preface to what she was about to say.
"There's something coming..." she began simply, almost out of breath. "...The word from on-duty soldiers is sparse at best, but there have been a surge of insurrections among both military and civilian populations. Waves of what appears to be violent civil disobedience is spreading rapidly" she said grimly.
Athena met Phoebe's gaze with a contemplative blink. She mentally analysed what her friend was telling her and asked, "By chance, have there been reports of strange beings dressed like Sailor Soldiers in the vicinity of any of these riots at any point?"
"They didn't say. Commander Pallas, however, has gotten herself involved with putting down each insurrection, but like a Hydra, you cut one head off and two more rise to take its place." Replied Phoebe, although she suspected Athena was suspicious of something the three had only heard about from neighbouring star systems.
Nessa looked to Athena, quite disturbed by the news. There hadn't been an insurrection since the end of oligarchic rule on Olympia, with the fall of King Cronus over a century ago. Athena's family line assumed the throne and began the constitutional monarchy and the reintroduction of the checks and balances of representative democracy that Olympians now contentedly lived under. "When did this start happening?" she asked.
Phoebe sighed. "Like, last night, according to General Zeus." she replied. "Queen Metis had been trying to reach us for the last hour, but someone suggested we leave our comms at home." she added with an accusing look at Athena.
Athena shook her head and sighed. "Of all the days..." she said, conceding her error. "Fine, we should suit-up and find Pallas."